Yami no Matsuei drabbles
by incandescens
Summary: Various Yami no Matsuei drabbles, collected here. Taken from different points in the storyline, not connected. Some may contain spoilers, or be AU. Note that I'm traditional, and my drabbles are 100 words precisely.
1. now sleeps the crimson petal

**now sleeps the crimson petal**

The glassy pool no longer holds reflected dreams; all the mirrors in the house are empty, and the women are gone; only shadows and dust track through the long corridors. The paper doors hang silent, and the trees outside have lost their leaves now that winter has come. 

There is no trace of Muraki here. He might as well have never come. He might have been anywhere.

Oriya lights a lamp, and listens to the empty silence, and does not know what he is waiting for.

He turns his head slightly at the sound of footsteps on the wooden floor.

---


	2. a deliberate man

**a deliberate man**

Tatsumi is used to the sound of weeping. He learned it long ago, in a hundred different variations, and he learned his own helplessness every time he tried to stop those tears.

He could burn in rage against the sorrow, against the thick, gulping sobs of hopelessness and despair, but it does no good. Instead he freezes, he adjusts his glasses, and he steps away.

Better for everyone that way, really.

He keeps his kindnesses deliberate and polite, within the bounds of courtesy. He keeps his judgments and his cruelties the same way.

Much safer for everyone that way.

Really.

---


	3. the empire of the senses

**the empire of the senses**

Tsuzuki doesn't burn; he shimmers, half out of focus, like the dust on the wings of butterflies, as fragile, as beautiful. If Tatsumi tries to catch him between his hands, Tsuzuki quivers and looks at him with huge amethyst eyes, dark as wet violets, and flushes, his ivory skin crimson with shame.

There but not quite there, caught but not quite caught, never fully perceived; as if he were words in a language that Tatsumi had forgotten long ago, words for love and beauty lost thousands of years ago, when lightning struck and towers fell and the world was changed.

---


	4. unclouded eyes

**unclouded eyes**

The world is full of spirits.

Asato, too young for an adult name or adult thoughts, tilts his head to look up at the setting sun and sees a flaming bird who spreads red wings across the arch of the sky, from east to west, as though to embrace him. The wind is full of tigers, white-furred, steel-clawed, and the river sings of dragons as it coils down towards the sea. He stands on the back of a great tortoise, and feels its pulse deep beneath his feet.

He tries to explain this. He tries. He really tries.

---


	5. the ties that bind

**the ties that bind**

Muraki doesn't want to lose his doll yet. He doesn't want the boy to fall into sleep, to finally say goodbye to this world, to choose forgetfulness and forsake revenge.

So in the dream, Hisoka feels the petals cling to his feet as he walks, feels the night air cold against his skin. Air is cold, flesh is warm; blood is warm, but the moon is cold for all its redness, the steel is cold for all its brightness.

When he wakes up and clings to Tsuzuki's warmth, he never once thinks of the dream as a gift to him.

---


	6. and the silence makes me lonely

**and the silence makes me lonely**

Polite formalities and proper behaviour were his walls against the world outside, but also his rules to live by. He'd grown up in the attic, heard other people through the floor, seen them through the window slats, but never known them.

He watched everyone else and wondered at them. Tsuzuki's openness, Watari's enthusiasm, Wakaba's friendship, Tatsumi's strength -- even Muraki's lust. How did they do it? Where were their rules?

But even at those times when retreat was most tempting, he knew that they were reaching out to him.

And it would have been -- improper -- to turn away.

---


	7. high on emotion

**high on emotion**

It isn't the alcohol, it isn't, it isn't, he tries to say as he sways and staggers and leans forward, but he can't find the words. It's the joy that burns in him. So unfamiliar a sensation, so strange to a boy who's abstained all his life (and all his death) and has instead grown used to the tastes of fear, of disgust, of lust, and of shame. This simple happiness is something which he doesn't recognise. A sip is easy, it goes down so smoothly, and before he knows it he tastes the fullness of this new partner's joy.

---


	8. in the lone lands

**in the lone lands**

First, to give someone up, you attempt to convince yourself that you no longer love him; then you try to break the links, one by one, between your heart and his, untll you no longer feel anything other than annoyed pity at his tears, or wry amusement at his antics.

You tell yourself that you are doing this for the best. You are prepared to let him die for his own good.

It hurts worse than death that he would rather live, and for someone else.

"Take care of him," you say, and wait for nightfall, alone in the shadows.


	9. AU: Taroticum: Judgement

**Taroticum: Judgement**

Some people say you can tell a man by the birds who come to his garden.

Muraki invited the nightingales. There is a secret to teaching them to sing during the day. It involves thorns and eyes and perpetual darkness.

Later, when death's agents came for him, he would have welcomed eternal night, if only so he need not see the dispassion in their eyes.

All the love, all the pain, all the hatred, distilled down to this; pity and gentleness and a quiet ending to a life of silver agony.

Meifu will not grant him the mercy of blindness.


	10. AU: Taroticum: Magician

**Taroticum: The Magician**

Muraki has never claimed to be a good man, or even a kind one. He has made sacrifices -- or, to be more precise, he has sacrificed other people.

But there is one principle he holds to.

To stop those nightwalkers, those quiet bringers of death, those _shinigami_, anything is permissible.

They come like shadows, walking the corridors of hospitals and asylums, demons in their wake, and they take away the young, the beautiful, the old, the beloved. They have no mercy. They have no pity.

He will stop them. Even if he must become like them to do it.


End file.
